While all eyes are on human numbers, it’s the rise in farm animals that is laying the planet waste
EXTRACT
Human numbers are rising at roughly 1.2% a year, while livestock numbers are rising at around 2.4% a year. By 2050 the world’s living systems will have to support about 120m tonnes of extra humans, and 400m tonnes of extra farm animals.
The technology behind bitcoin could transform how the economy works
To understand the power of blockchain systems, and the things they can do, it is important to distinguish between three things that are commonly muddled up, namely the bitcoin currency, the specific blockchain that underpins it and the idea of blockchains in general.
A dystopian future where technology has made humanity obsolete is a theme older than the Industrial Revolution. History has proven that while some jobs are phased out thanks to technology more jobs are created by it, after all someone needs to monitor and make the machines. As technology grows and makes computing systems capable of reason, startups are making temporary gigs permanent jobs, and 3D printing makes it possible to make any object, the obsolete humanity idea does not seem so far-fetched. Kurzweilai shares a possible future with “The SAP Future Series: Digital Technology’s Exponential Growth Curve Foretells Avalanche Of Business Disruption.”
Despite the fact that only one-third of Americans have them, college degrees have become the new high school diplomas, the baseline everyone in the workforce is assumed to meet.
But it's important to remember why employers can get away with this: They have power, and workers don't. And as their power grows, they can engage in ever-more frivolous and gratuitous demands for job applicants.
Part I in the Reinventing the US Army monograph series.
Updated November 15, 2016 Robert Steele
This is the author's preliminary draft of the first of three monographs focused on the future of the US Army as an expeditionary force in a complex world that is rapidly decentralizing while also facing major development challenges. A revised draft is provide at DOC below but the online full-text version has not been updated.
Phi Beta Iota: America the Beautiful is in the dumps right now, but these photographs put our national well-being in sharp relief compared to the horrors being endured by the Chinese people.
Wage statistics for 2014, recently released by the Social Security Administration, provide proof to the claim we all feared was true: The middle class is actually disappearing. As the online publication Washington’s Blog notes, 51 percent of U.S. workers in 2014 made less than $2,500 a month before taxes—which is below the poverty line for a family of five. What’s worse is that as the numbers in the original report are parsed, other stunning facts become clear. For instance, the fact that nearly 40 percent of Americans aren’t even making $30,000 but rather are earning closer to $20,000. Or that 70 percent of workers made less than $50,000 in 2014.